Pictures from the Best Translated Book Party

It feels like the award party for the 2009 Best Translated Book Award took place ages ago, and although we posted about the two winners (Hiraide’s For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut and Bartis’s Tranquility), we never actually put up any photos of the event . . . Monica Carter actually recorded the entire ceremony, and we’re hoping to have that online at some point in the near future as well. But for now, here are a few images from the event:

This is from the start of the ceremony, and gives a sense of how many people came out for the party. You can also sort of see how cool the Melville House space is.

That’s Barbara Epler from New Directions accepting the award for Hiraide’s book.

And this is Jill Schoolman from Archipelago accepting Bartis’s award.

If we ever get the video of the event online, you’ll be able to see me totally screw up and hang the wrong set of awards to Barbara . . .

On a related publicity note, the most recent issue of Time Out Budapest there’s an article about the award and the fact that three Hungarian books made the fiction longlist. I can’t find the article online, but I love the pdf version I have, both because Gwen Jones did such a great job writing this and because the pull quote that’s blown up in the middle of the article is: “The title, naturally, refers to the everyday shit and horror of the world.”